Terms of Service

Last updated: September 12, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern access to and use of the HQ mobile application, website, dashboard, and related services (together, the "Service") provided by Untether GbR ("we," "us," or "our"). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.

1. Provider

Operator:

Untether Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts (GbR) Partners: Fabian S. Klinke, Louis Köhler, Paul Vogler, Roger Nussbaum Represented jointly by its partners Uhlandstr. 171/172 10719 Berlin, Germany

General contact: info@untether.social Legal, DSA, and copyright notices: legal@untether.social

2. Acceptance and Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use the Service. By registering, you confirm that you are at least 18 and legally capable of entering this agreement.
New-account flows may require an affirmative confirmation of age and acceptance of these Terms, the Community Guidelines, and the current policy bundle. When the interface says that you agree to the Privacy Policy, this confirms that the notice was made available; it does not turn processing based on contract, law, or legitimate interests into consent. We may retain evidence of the policy version and acceptance once that capability is implemented.
You must provide accurate, current information and keep it updated.
If you do not agree to these Terms, do not create an account or use the Service.

3. The Service

HQ provides features that can include:

Artist and community feeds with posts, media, comments, and reactions
Communities, profiles, search, XP, badges, leaderboards, and in-app activities
Shows, venue information, RSVPs, attendance, and location-based discovery
One-to-one direct messages and media sharing
Push notifications, essential service email, and optional product email
Artist, show, booking, moderation, analytics, and operational dashboard tools for authorized users
Support, feedback, reporting, and legal-notice handling

Features may change. We will provide legally required notice where a change materially affects the agreement or requires a new choice.

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for its intended purposes. Untether and its licensors retain all rights in the Service software, design, documentation, branding, and other materials, excluding your content and third-party materials. Except where mandatory law permits it, you must not copy, sell, rent, sublicense, distribute, reverse engineer, interfere with, or use the Service to build a competing service.

The Service may expose a documented, unauthenticated, read-only public API. Subject to these Terms and the endpoint documentation, you may access, copy, cache, transform, and display only the API's published public show, artist, venue, schedule, and related public image URL data to operate public event listings, discovery, calendars, or integrations. You must follow documented limits, preserve source links or attribution supplied with the data, and stop using data that HQ removes from the public API. You must not use the API or its data to access or infer private information, expose messages, unpublished material, moderation data, credentials, or unrelated user content, or to build a competing social or community service. This permission is non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, and revocable. It does not grant ownership of or rights in third-party names, images, marks, or works.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, you allow us to use them without restriction or payment. This does not transfer ownership of content that is otherwise governed by Section 8.

4. Accounts and Security

Keep your credentials secure and notify us promptly of suspected unauthorized access.
You are responsible for activity under your account unless it results from a security failure for which applicable law makes us responsible.
Do not create an account for another person without authority or evade an account restriction by creating another account.
We may require additional verification to protect an account, investigate abuse, or comply with law.

5. Community Rules

The Community Guidelines form part of these Terms.
Prohibited conduct includes harassment, hate speech, threats, exploitation, illegal activity, extremist content, spam, impersonation, doxxing, privacy violations, malware, cheating, reporting abuse, and copyright or other intellectual-property infringement.
Any sexual exploitation of a minor, child sexual abuse material, grooming, or sexualization of minors is prohibited even though the Service is adult-only.
We may use automated signals and human review to investigate violations. Temporary visibility restrictions may be applied before a final decision where necessary for safety.

6. Direct Messages

Direct messages are private between participants but remain subject to these Terms and the Community Guidelines.
Unreported conversations are not routinely reviewed. We may access relevant messages when a participant reports them, when necessary to protect safety, or when legally required.
You may block another user. A block prevents direct interaction and hides both accounts from each other's user-visible profiles, feeds, and attendance lists.
A conversation participant may report a direct message in-app. The report shares the selected message, limited surrounding context, attachment references, immutable identifiers, and the reporter's optional note with authorized moderators.

7. Virtual Features

XP, screws, badges, leaderboards, and game scores are virtual features with no monetary value. They cannot be sold, redeemed, transferred, or exchanged outside functionality we expressly provide. We may adjust formulas and invalidate manipulated activity to protect fairness.

8. Your Content and License

You retain ownership of content you submit.
You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license limited to what is necessary to host, reproduce, format, transmit, display, moderate, secure, and operate your content within the Service.
For content you choose to make public, the license also permits us to display and preview it in HQ-related product pages and communications, and to make the portions included in published public show, artist, venue, schedule, and related public image data available to third-party API consumers for the limited uses described in Section 3. We do not use private direct messages for general promotion or expose them through that API.
We may use eligible public posts/comments and moderation outcomes to develop spam and abuse-prevention tooling. Direct messages are excluded from model-training releases. Identifiable or pseudonymous source data remains governed by the Privacy Policy. Only an irreversibly anonymized safety dataset or model artifact that no longer relates to an identifiable person may be retained indefinitely.
The license ends when the content is deleted, except for limited copies required by law, active safety investigations, legal claims, and irreversible anonymous derivatives that can no longer be linked to you or the source content.
You represent that you have the rights and permissions needed to submit the content and that its use as described here does not violate another person's rights.

9. Copyright and Other Rights

Notices

If you believe content infringes copyright or another legal right, send a notice to legal@untether.social containing:

Your name, contact details, and authority to act for the rights holder
Identification of the protected work or right
The exact URL, content identifier, account, or other information that lets us locate the material
A clear explanation of the alleged infringement and supporting information
A statement that you have a good-faith belief the disputed use is not authorized by the rights holder, its agent, or law
A statement that the notice is accurate and, for a U.S. DMCA notice, made under penalty of perjury
Your physical or electronic signature

We may request missing information. Knowingly false or abusive notices may create liability.

Our Process

We assess sufficiently precise notices diligently under applicable law, including Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act where applicable. We may restrict or remove content, preserve relevant evidence, notify the affected user with the main reasons, and provide a way to contest the decision unless notice would violate law or create a safety risk.

For a valid U.S. DMCA notice, we may remove or disable access expeditiously and notify the uploader. A U.S. counter-notice should identify the removed material and its former location, state under penalty of perjury that removal resulted from mistake or misidentification, provide the subscriber's name, address, telephone number, consent to the applicable U.S. federal-court jurisdiction and service of process, and include a signature. Where 17 U.S.C. § 512 applies, we may restore the material after the statutory waiting period unless the claimant informs us that a court action has been filed.

We may suspend or terminate users who repeatedly or seriously infringe rights, taking account of the circumstances and applicable law. This process does not represent that a U.S. DMCA agent registration has already been completed.

10. Location and Shows

City selection and optional precise-location features help provide show and venue information. You control device-level precise and background-location permissions.
Location, show, venue, and imported booking data can be incomplete or inaccurate. Verify time-sensitive information with the artist, promoter, or venue.
Do not publish another person's private location or event information without authority.
An artist may offer a limited free-entry guest-list place, a half priced place, or a skip list place with full-price entry and no queue to users who RSVP to that artist's show. An RSVP does not guarantee an offer, admission, or a ticket.
HQ allocates available free-entry places first, half priced places second, and skip list places third. Eligibility and priority use the user's XP leaderboard rank in the relevant artist community. Allocation across several artists can also favor a result that gives places to more different users.
You must confirm an offer before its deadline. You may decline without an XP penalty. A half priced offer shows the amount payable and currency before you accept it. A skip list offer gives you entry without queuing, at the full admission price charged by the event. If you accept, you must provide an accurate entry name and authorize us to share it with the relevant artist and, when needed for entry, the promoter, venue, or ticket provider. The recipient depends on the artist's entry arrangements.
If you accept an offer that is both finalized and artist-confirmed-sent, but do not check in, we may deduct 500 XP from each community in which you are then an active member and exclude you from free-entry, half priced, and skip list distribution for three calendar months. This consequence does not apply when HQ or an authorized administrator corrects the attendance record during the review period, or when the artist has not confirmed that all finalized entry details were sent.
Free-entry, half priced, and skip list offers are personal and cannot be sold or transferred. HQ displays the stated half priced amount and currency but does not collect payment. HQ does not provide an automated ticket-provider integration. The artist, promoter, venue, or ticket provider can state separate entry or purchase conditions.
Artists must protect accepted guest-list names and use them only for the relevant show's entry or ticket delivery. After all finalized entry details have been sent, the artist must make one confirmation for the pool. HQ records that pool-level confirmation and its timestamp and actor. HQ or an authorized administrator handles disputes and attendance corrections; artists do not make those corrections through this flow.

11. Notifications and Email

Device push notifications require system permission and can be controlled through device and in-app settings.
We may send essential security, account, legal, and service messages where needed to provide the Service.
Optional promotional or product email is sent only where we have a valid consent or another applicable statutory permission. You can opt out through the provided link or account preference. Opting out does not stop essential messages.

12. Analytics and Diagnostics

We use first-party product analytics, minimized Sentry diagnostics, and Vercel hosting logs as described in the Privacy Policy. Available privacy choices, identifiers, recipients, and current implementation limitations are explained there.

13. Third-Party Services

The Service integrates external providers including Supabase, AWS, Sentry, Vercel, Resend, Apple, Google, KLIPY, YouTube, DuckDuckGo, jsDelivr, ABOSS, external media or link operators, and AI agents or other clients that you authorize through OAuth. Their role and the information sent to them are described in the Privacy Policy. Features governed directly by a provider can also be subject to that provider's terms. You are responsible for reviewing the identity and permissions of an OAuth client before you approve access. We are not responsible for independent services outside our control, subject to mandatory law.

14. Moderation, Reasons, and Appeals

You can report supported posts and comments in-app. Illegal-content and copyright notices may also be submitted by email under Section 9. Direct-message reporting is described in Section 6.
Reports may be grouped and weighted using role and abuse-prevention signals. Content may be temporarily hidden while reviewed.
If we remove or restrict content, a feature, or an account, we provide the affected user with the main reasons and an appeal route where required, unless prohibited by law or necessary to protect safety.
Reporter identities are not disclosed to the reported user unless legally required.
We may retain reports, decisions, notice records, and related evidence as described in the Privacy Policy.

15. Suspension, Termination, and Deletion

You may stop using the Service and request account deletion in settings.
We may suspend or terminate access for a breach of these Terms, the Community Guidelines, safety requirements, or law. We will consider proportionality and provide notice or appeal rights where required.
Account deletion follows the cooling-off period, exceptions, backup treatment, and anonymous-data rules in the Privacy Policy.
Sections that by their nature must survive termination remain effective, including accrued obligations, legal claims, permitted evidence retention, and anonymous derivatives.

16. Service Availability and Liability

We aim to provide a reliable Service but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free availability.
Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded, including liability for intent, gross negligence, or injury to life, body, or health.
For slight negligence, we are liable for breach of essential contractual duties only to the extent of foreseeable damage typical for this agreement, subject to mandatory consumer law.
Mandatory warranty, product-liability, data-protection, and consumer rights remain unaffected.

17. Changes

We may change the Service or these Terms for legal, security, technical, or product reasons. We will give appropriate advance notice of material changes. If law requires affirmative consent, continued use alone will not constitute that consent. You may stop using the Service before a change takes effect.

18. Governing Law and Disputes

German law applies, excluding conflict-of-law rules, while mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence remain unaffected. Statutory courts and venue rules apply to consumers. To the extent permitted for merchants, public-law entities, or persons without a general German venue, Berlin is the agreed venue.

19. General Terms

These Terms, the Community Guidelines, and any feature-specific rules presented to you form the agreement for your use of the Service. The Privacy Policy is a notice about data processing and is not incorporated as a source of contractual consent.

If a provision is invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to apply. The invalid provision will be replaced only to the extent permitted by applicable law; no automatic reduction or replacement applies where law prohibits it. A failure to enforce a provision once is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later.

We may send account, security, legal, and contractual notices electronically to the address associated with your account or through the Service where applicable law permits. You are responsible for keeping your contact information current.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms: info@untether.social Legal, DSA, copyright, and moderation notices: legal@untether.social

Adult declaration and Apple Account age ranges

You must explicitly confirm that you are at least 18 and accept the current Terms and Community Guidelines before continuing in supported clients. On supported Apple devices, HQ may request an Apple Account age range. A range that does not establish an age of at least 18 prevents access in that client. If your Apple Account birth date is inaccurate, correct it through Apple Account settings and retry. Self-declaration remains available where age-range sharing is optional and is declined or unavailable. Required regional age-range sharing must complete before you can continue. HQ records your declaration and the accepted policy version; it does not represent a self-declared age as identity verification.